Five ways Google is trying to kill Christmas

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The search engine currently features a Doodle adorned with Christmasy lights in homage to December holidays, but goes to considerable lengths to minimize the month’s signature celebration.

Click on the image at Google.com and up pops “December global holidays” content that downplays and diverts readers from the true meaning of Christmas, the world’s most popular holiday.

First, it shares a default page from worldstrides.com that dryly mentions Christmas and gives equal weight to a list of contrived and obscure celebrations such as Kwanzaa and Boxing Day (sorry, Mum and Canada). It gives Christmas, observed by more than a quarter of the planet, less space than Hanukkah, a minor one in the Jewish calendar.

Second, Google intentionally pushes a non-Christmas narrative. The search results include a “People Also Ask” box that directs users to content such as: What country does not celebrate Christmas in December?” and “What holidays besides Christmas are celebrated in December? “

The box also asks and answers “What are Global Holidays?” by touting the spiritual significance of the month for Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans and Zoroastrians.

As for Christmas, it declares it "now mostly celebrated as a cultural holiday rather than a religious one."

Third, the search giant sends people to a December holiday video that features an exhaustive list of celebrations, including such gems as Festivus, Omisoka, and Saturnalia, in which Christmas seems an afterthought.

Fourth, click on the images associated with Google’s December global holidays Doodle and one pattern becomes evident. Among the countless pictures of Santa, Hanukkah candles, presents, trees, feasts, cartoons, Disney characters, Barbie dolls, Kwanzaa costumes, and Google icons, one image type is conspicuously absent: The Nativity. See for yourself.

Fifth, there’s a “Christmas” sub tab at the top of the image results. Presumably a click here would provide more meaningful results. Hardly. The baby Jesus in a manger goes from non-existent to barely perceptible, hidden among thousands of non-religious images in a kind of Where’s Waldo manner.

Why does Google take Christ out of Christmas? It has a preferred celebration for its users. One whose name it repeats over and over again with its December doodle content. So let us be the first to wish you a Merry Global December Holidays!

>> It gives Christmas, observed by more than a quarter of the planet, less space than Hanukkah, a minor one in the Jewish calendar. <<

Heh.

This pretty much confirms what I've been saying for weeks. On THIS thread (https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3915372/posts) , FReepers are living in some alternate reality where the mainstream media "despises Hanukkah and refuses to acknowledge it". They have it backwards. Here in the REAL world, the ONLY time I hear about the "importance" of Hanukkah, and why it supposedly deserves more attention and praise than Christmas, is when I hear propaganda from the mainstream media trying to underplay Christmas.

It would be no different if I tried to pretend the Feast of the Transfiguration is a super important, sacred holy day, and went around lecturing Jews that they should learn about it and acknowledge it during the time of Yom Kippor because it deals with Jewish old testaments prophets and involved a miracle, therefore it deserves as much if not more attention than Yom Kippor. Any Jew who actually researched the Feast of the Transfiguration would quickly realize that although both of those points are technically true, its a minor holy day in Christianity, and making it out to be more important than Yom Kippor itself just because they happen to occur around the same time on the calendar is BS.

Amusingly, even some protestant FReepers buy that nonsense, despite the fact both the Jewish and Protestant bibles don't even accept the scripture that established the feast of Hanukkah as canon. One protestant FReeper even tried to claim its the only Jewish holiday that was established in the new testament instead of the old, which is a ridiculous assertion because Jews would NOT celebrate the holiday if its only source from the new testament era. It would be no different than expecting Christians to acknowledge some Christian event that is recorded in the Quran but not the bible itself.

Going by their OWN standards, Hanukkah is an "unbibical" tradition that was "invented" by men. Sorry, can't have it both ways.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.